


(I will gladly stay) an afterthought

by mutantmeme



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, I'm so sorry Richard Siken, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mentions of Panic Attacks, You Are Jeff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutantmeme/pseuds/mutantmeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you are stiles, and this is after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(I will gladly stay) an afterthought

**Author's Note:**

> title from Amanda Palmer's 'Astronaut: A Short History Of Nearly Nothing'  
> and hey I'm on [tumblr](http://officialfemme.tumblr.com)
> 
> EDIT: [oh my god the wonderful Iggy podficc'd this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1554962)

You’re not in a car with a beautiful boy, but there’s a frosted bowl slammed onto your cluttered desk and a beautiful girl demands you speak. She taps her feet in time with your heartbeat and the quickstep blurs the distortion of your already glazed eyes and you don’t want to unpick the careful seams of your lips and you want to throw her ice cream against the wall and watch it scatter chocolate-chip constellations on treasured paint flakes and you can’t help but tell her: “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Wait – no, you don’t hate me, or no, you _do_ hate me?”

“Erica,” you exhale, “I love you.”

She smiles wryly, an upturned, lopsided spasm, and tells you she knows. She tells you that Scott’s in a car with a beautiful boy and your heart crumples like an old helium balloon and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe someone ~~Scott~~ ripped at your latex and no amount of huffing and puffing will hang you in another ~~Isaac’s~~ hospital room. Maybe you’re not even jealous and this is what a heart attack feels like. Maybe you’re not having a heart attack and this is what self-loathing feels like.

Maybe you’re being an asshole. Maybe you’re selfish because you don’t try and stop yourself from closing your eyes and watching the stop-motion tragedy of the last time you were in a car with a beautiful boy, letting him slip between your spidery fingers, loving so violently there were scars behind his eyes when he leapt through the door.

* * *

 

You fuck Derek to feel human again. He’s not beautiful to you – his jaw is too even, his stubble too rough, his voice too stiff, his dick too different. He’s a sculpture by Michelangelo’s bastard son and you pretend to love it when he paints sweet nothings on the shell of your ear. You fuck a handsome man and his hands shake and you scream for his hips to cant harder, _harder_ , you’re breaking into billions of atoms that don’t know your best friend’s name and maybe that’s a good thing – maybe you’re being an asshole when he asks you to stay the night and you flip him off.

You fucked Derek and he doesn't meet your eyes anymore and you pretend that’s okay.

* * *

 

Lydia kisses you.

Maybe that’s a good thing. It isn’t recommended by psychologists and your lungs aren’t electrocuted by her strawberry-blonde fear, but it’s better than sitting alone in a car with your ugly thoughts.

* * *

 

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy and his mouth forms an apology that you swallow with your hungry, desperate tongue. He tastes like sweat and confusion and you pretend he has a tattoo on his left bicep and if you sigh your best friend’s name between Isaac’s teeth, well, he pities you too much to tell.

* * *

 

“Have you ever heard of Richard Siken?”

You lie to Kira. You keep doing it. She traces the red strings tangled in your oesophagus and hacks at them with her fractured katana and maybe that’s a good thing.

It laughs at you. There’s a sound in your mind like a door banging in a hurricane and you lie to Kira.

* * *

 

You’re sitting on the hood of a car with a crying girl and she won’t tell you she’s fearless because none of you are now. She yells at you and beats her fists weakly against your tee shirt and it laughs, drunk on her shredded vocal cords, and you try to tell her to run but you don’t want to unpick the careful seams of your lips and maybe it’s a good thing Erica’s dead so she can’t burn in shame for what you’ve become.

You’re happy you don’t believe in Heaven any more.

* * *

 

Maybe it’s a good thing that your father would shoot a man for you.

Maybe it’s a good thing that there’s enough of you left to flinch at the thought.

* * *

 

Sometimes it calls you its beautiful boy – your body is its car and you won’t tell it you love letting go, of letting it take the blame for the sticky rusted stains on the steering wheel of your jeep. You hate to be relieved when it’s ripped from your sinew like a hideous disease and your heart crumples like an old helium balloon because there are no words left to fill the blank dictionary in your brain matter and you hate to be relieved but.

But you sit alone in your body and the bereft never-space won’t tell you a beautiful boy could never love you back.

* * *

 

He climbs through your window at nine pm on a school night with a bottle of Jack Daniels and an open ear, so you speak like you don’t know what the concept of oxygen is and touch the back of his right arm and cry for eleven minutes and thirty-three seconds straight as gooseflesh rises on his skin and you want to break the bottle over your head until your salty mistakes mingle with whiskey and blood. Your father left two hours ago, so you scream into his chest and he can’t do anything but paint sweet nothings on the shell of your ear. The neighbour’s floodlights cast a tangerine glow across his frown, so you sew your lips together with titanium thread and let him play Tetris with the silence and wait for the inevitable break, the whimper, the silence.

He doesn’t climb back through your window at two am on a school morning, so you smash your face against his like the collision of a wrecking ball on the cinder-block compound of Scott-and-Stiles. You kiss him and maybe even now there’s jealousy, maybe you’re having a heart attack, maybe you still hate yourself, but:

You’re in a bedroom with a beautiful boy and he tells you he loves you and maybe that’s a good thing.

 


End file.
